Wednesday, January 30, 2008

That's right...we want you to be the reporter for the protest of 'Anonymous' VS. The Church of Scientology. Are you going to be in or near any of the follwing areas on Februry 10th 2008? If so, we want your pictures, your audio, video and interviews of the days protest:

Please add you name and information such as whether you plan to use video, audio, still photography, or all of the above by clicking here.

Administrators for 711chan.org, one of the websites responsible for starting Project Chanology, a "raid" or attack against The Church of Scientology and their website, called off their attack.

In an exclusive interview with Wikinews, an administrator of 711chan states that the will "probably stay away from the CoS (Church of Scientology)."

"We're probably just going to stay away from the CoS raid. It was poorly managed. We could've brought down a lot more if we weren't just a bunch of unorganized brats," said 'Inaki', an administrator on 711chan.org.

"Many people from 711chan still want to raid, but the administration is sick of it," added Inaki who also stated that "Partyvan IRC actually has decided to remove the raid."

Much of the reason stems from the fact that the attack on the Church was meant to stay within 711chan and that users were to stay "anonymous." An e-mail was leaked on the internet when the attack began exposing the script used to attack the Church's website.

Sunday, January 27, 2008

They’ve got oodles of cash (allegedly), they have lots of celebrity members (definitely), but they don’t have too good a public image - at least not on the Internet.

Who are we talking about? Well, that’d be the Church of Scientology.

Over the past week the Church has ended up back in the spotlight following the posting of a video of Church member Tom Cruise and its subsequent takedown. Dozens of copies have sprung up and “Anonymous” - a rag-tag bunch of computer enthusiasts - have knocked several of the Church’s sites off the net.

The Church hasn’t said much, but we’re trying to do something about that. If you’ve any questions about recent events you’d like to see Wikinews put to the Church, send them in. Email scoop@wikinewsie.org and we’ll see if we can get an answer.

Also feel free to vote in our poll to the right of the blog postings, at the top of the page.

Saturday, January 26, 2008

Wikinews has learned that a new entity calling itself The Regime used keylogging to gain an administrator password to 711chan.org, a site popular with the open vigilante group "Anonymous" that has recently been attacking Scientology online. Wikinews interviewed The Regime. Click the above link to see the interview and full report.

As of 9:57 p.m. (eastern time) the site 711chan.org, has been replaced, allegedly by The Regime by the title Church of Scientology along with a statement on the home page stating "This website has been deleted due to copyright claims from the Church of Scientology." A search performed using Google, on 711chan has returned the number one result of the apparent hack. All that remains of 711chan.org is an apparent message to the members of the site to "run" and "hide."

"711chan is full of fucking fail for siding with Gaia. I'm out of here, faggots. Enjoy your Gaia," said the message, which currently is only available in a cached version.

The Regime's first attack went along with a message posted to 711chan's website (quoted below) saying that "This site has not been blessed by The Regime and is deemed lame", believing Anonymous to be self-proclaimed hackers (although this title was primarily used by the media). It also refers to Anonymous' attempt to bring down the Church of Scientology (named 'Operation Chanology'), saying that "chanology is lame, scientology is lame". It thereafter declared that the message board where Anonymous had been discussing Operation Chanology had been removed. Minutes later, 711chan stopped responding to queries.Click here for the full EXCLUSIVE interview and report.

Invited to participate in a debate during his visit to New York City this week to address the United Nations General Assembly, Ahmadinejad engaged University president Lee Bollinger on a number of topics, including his country's human rights record, opinions on Israel and the Holocaust and the role of nuclear weapons and terrorism on the global stage.

Mendoza, Argentina – The Argentinian federal judge Olga Arrabal orders closure of public retransmission television station in Mendoza at request of Vila-Manzano Group, a monopolistic media conglomerate.

The judge ordered the cessation of broadcasts by the local relay transmitter of Canal 7 television station in Mendoza's capital city. The inhabitants of this city and the departments of Maipú, Luján de Cuyo, Lavalle, San Martín, Palmira, Junín, Santa Rosa, La Paz and Rivadavia were without access to the public television.

The authorities of the Secretaría de Medios de la Nación, the Sistema Nacional de Medios Públicos and of Channel 7 will appeal the resolution of the Second Federal Court of Mendoza that left more than 1 million persons without access to the channel.

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

The Internet-based group "Anonymous" has released statements on YouTube and via a press release, outlining what they call a "War on Scientology". Church of Scientology related websites, such as religousfreedomwatch.org have been removed due to a suspected distributed denial-of-service-attack (DDoS) by a group calling themselves "Anonymous". On Friday, the same group allegedly brought down Scientology's main website, scientology.org, which was available sporadically throughout the weekend.

Several websites relating to the Church of Scientology have been slowed down, brought to a complete halt or seemingly removed from the Internet completely in an attack which seems to be continuous. The scientology.org site was back online briefly on Monday, and is currently loading slowly.

On Monday, the group released a video titled: "Message to Scientology" on YouTube concerning their intentions to attack the Church of Scientology. A robotic voice on the video begins with "Hello leaders of Scientology. We are Anonymous," and continues by explaining their motivations: "Over the years we have been watching you, your campaigns of misinformation, your suppression of dissent and your litigious nature. All of these things have caught our eye. With the leakage of your latest propaganda video into mainstream circulation the extent of your malign influence over those who have come to trust you as leaders has been made clear to us. Anonymous has therefore decided that your organisation should be destroyed." The message goes on to state that the group intends to "expel Scientology from the Internet".

Fresh off his trip to Israel, David Shankbone has accepted an invitation from the Rio Convention & Visitors Bureau to go to Brazil in March. The focus of the trip will be photography, updating some of the Rio de Janeiro articles on Wikipedia, and news stories that come from the trip.

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Wikinews.org - Buffalo, New York – A woman in Buffalo, New York in the United States is in critical condition tonight at Sisters Of Charity Hospital after she accidentally set herself on fire.

The unnamed elderly woman is receiving oxygen for medical problems and lit a cigarette, which ignited the oxygen coming from her mask, setting her on fire.

Despite her "severe" burns as described by firefighters on radio communications, she was still able to dial the emergency line in the U.S., 911.

In the U.S. only 4% of all residential fires were reportedly caused by smoking materials in 2002. These fires, however, were responsible for 19% of residential fire fatalities and 9% of injuries. The fatality rate due to smoking is nearly four times higher than the overall residential fire rate; injuries are more than twice as likely. Forty percent of all smoking fires start in the bedroom or living room/family room; in 35% of these fires, bedding or upholstered furniture are the items first ignited.

Sunday, January 20, 2008

Wikinews has learned that according to an internet posting made just over 24 hours ago, the Church of Scientology's website is being attacked by hackers, causing the site to shut down.

The attack was launched on Wednesday by a user calling himself "Anonymous", on the website "Project Chanology". The "History" section of the site explains, in a satirical fashion, that the incident was prompted by the Church of Scientology's attempts to remove the Tom Cruise video from YouTube.

"Someone emailed me earlier today talking about a tool a group’s been using to attack the scientology website. It’s an interesting tool, created to overload/create malformed strings and crash a website’s database," said the post by an unknown author on pigmy.

Saturday, January 19, 2008

Wikinews.org - Buffalo, New York – According to scanner frequencies of the Buffalo, New York fire department, smoke was reported on at least five floors at the northeast side at One HSBC Center in downtown Buffalo. The call came in around 10:50 p.m. (Eastern Time) on Friday January 18, not long after the ending of the NHL hockey game: the Sabres versus the Atlanta Thrashers which was held at HSBC Arena, a few blocks away from the tower.

According to firefighters communications the people that were on the 22nd floor made it out of the building safely. Firefighters saw "white smoke of varying intensities, believed to have been electrical" on floors 9 through 13. The source of the smoke was not identified, but the first alarm was on the 13th floor, followed by the 10th then the 9th.

Because of the cold temperatures and wind chills in the 10's, workers at the tower were allowed back into the first floor, which has been cleared by firefighters earlier in the call.

At 11:41 p.m., firefighters gave the all clear to begin packing up with no conclusion as to where the smoke originated. They used ventilation fans to clear the floors of smoke and then shut them off to see if anymore smoke would reappear, which it did not. Remaining employees and personnel have since been allowed back to work. No damage is reported.

The tower, built in 1970, is the tallest in Buffalo and is home several agencies including the Consulate General of Canada. HSBC currently occupies 75% of the tower which has 40 floors. It stands at 529 feet (161.2 meters) tall.

The popular video website YouTube has been blocked in Turkey once more. Several sources quote complaints against a video that insults Atatürk, founder and first president of the Republic of Turkey, as the reason for the block. On Friday, internet users in Turkey found the website replaced by a notice saying:

Access to this web site has been suspended in accordance with decision no: 2008/55 of T.R. Ankara 12th Criminal Court of Peace.

At the moment, it remains unclear which video exactly is to blame. Some media sources say that the video compared Atatürk with a monkey. This led some YouTube users to suspect that a video entitled 'ataturk was a gay and a monkey turkey turkiye turks' led to the block. This video was added on November 7, 2007, and is a series of images with Atatürk's face on monkeys, homosexuals, obese individuals and several pictures of Borat. The uploader of the video, known as gaymal45, has several other videos which mock Prime Minister Erdogan and President Abdullah Gül.

Friday, January 18, 2008

In an exclusive report, Wikinews has learned that on Wednesday two users, one anonymous and the other only known as MODX, added code on the collaborative encyclopedia Wikipedia for a computer virus known as the LoveLetter or ILOVEYOU virus.

The users inserted the VBScript code into various pages including the Wikipedia Sandbox, a page used for editorial testing. This was relatively harmless, as the code could not be activated despite causing some antivirus software to issue an alert.

A Wikipedia administrator began blocking the users and reverting their edits. "I went further and deleted the contributions of these editors where I could in the hopes of preventing follow-up attacks, copycat actions, and random editors stumbling into viral traps whilst walking through a page history", said Scientizzle, the administrator who found the code and attempted to clean up the additions.

However, a major problem arose when he tried to delete the edits from the sandbox. This involves deleting the entire page and restoring good revisions, but the sandbox has such a "massive revision history" that this caused Wikipedia's servers to overload for half an hour, locking countless users out of editing the encyclopedia.

Sunday, January 13, 2008

The aim of this new idea is to have an election for a Wikinews Picture of the Year 2007, in an analogy to the Picture of the Year contest on Commons. With this initiative we would like to promote photojournalism and quality images with great news value for use on Wikinews and other Wikimedia projects. This idea is not meant to compete with the election on Commons (the rules and candidates are totally different) or criticise Commons in any way, rather it is aimed to promote more collaboration between Wikinews and Wikimedia photographers.

Saturday, January 12, 2008

Over 700 votes were cast in the Pick Your Own Top Model! contest. Wikinews is pleased to announce that Kahlen Rondot, the runner-up in Cycle 4 of America's Next Top Model, won with 180 votes. Elyse Sewell from Cycle 1 received 173 votes for a second-place finish. Natasha Galkina from Cycle 8 came in third with 148 votes.

All three top vote-getters may be interviewed in the future, but the next Top Model interview, after scheduled interviews with Furonda (C6) and Keenyah (C4), will be with Kahlen, if she does choose to talk to us.

The Lakota Freedom Delegation, which in December declared that the Lakota people were withdrawing from their treaties with the United States and reasserting their sovereignty as an independent state, is acting without the support of the Treaty Council, the traditional government of the Lakota, Wikinews has learned.

Wikinews spoke with Floyd Looks-For-Buffalo Hand, an Oglala Lakota Treaty Delegate and Elder, also an author and a spiritual leader in the indigenous Lakota religion, and who is also blood uncle to Lakota Freedom Delegation member Canupa Gluha Mani.

The Lakota Freedom Delegation has claimed that, while the BIA-recognized tribal governments of the Lakota have not supported them, the Lakota Freedom Delegation's authority extends from support by the Treaty Council of the Elders of Lakota as well as from the 1974 International Indian Treaty Council.

Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Wikinews has now made history in the media, becoming the first ever collaborative, citizen journalism news site to interview a world leader.

Along with technology writers for Slate, PC Magazine, USA Today, BusinessWeek, Aviation Weekly and other publications, Wikinews was invited by the America-Israel Friendship League and the Israeli Foreign Ministry to review Israel’s technology sector as part of a campaign to 're-brand the country.' To show that there is more to Israel than the Palestinian conflict. On this trip, the non-conflict item on display was the large Israeli technology sector, which has given the world the Pentium processor and Instant Messaging. The schedule was hectic: 12-14 hours a day were spent doing everything from trips to the Weizmann Institute to dinner with Yossi Vardi.

On Thursday, the fifth day of the the junket, David Saranga of the foreign ministry was able to arrange an exclusive interview for David Shankbone with the President of Israel, Nobel Peace Prize recipient Shimon Peres. For over an hour they spoke about Iranian politics, whether Israel is in danger of being side-lined in Middle Eastern importance because of Arab oil wealth, and his thoughts against those who say Israeli culture is in a state of decay.

Peres is the elder statesman of Israeli politics, but he remembers that he has not always been as popular as he is today. "Popularity is like perfume: nice to smell, dangerous to drink," said Peres.

"You don’t drink it." The search for popularity, he goes on to say, will kill a person who has an idea against the status quo.

Julian Lemoine - known as speedblue - once wrote a search routine styled after the Google "suggest" tool; a design intended to give a result based, in part, on how many incoming links an article had. The routine might, he hoped, help the wiki software be used as a thinking tool, helping people follow their thoughts and inter-related topics through the rapidly developing English and French Wikipedia projects. He called it "Wikipedia suggest".

An internal Wikimedia communiqué was leaked over the weekend. Like many e-mails, the document is a chain of forwards, replies, and attachments. The attached Portable Document Format (PDF) file was from a PowerPoint presentation, entitled "Wikimedia Foundation: Past, Present, and Future". The presentation is watermarked confidential, do not distribute, and details the Foundation's recent financial, technical, and traffic history, outlines near-term forecasts for all three, and makes suggestions for slightly longer horizons as well. By itself the document led to several inter-connected news stories.

The software which underpins the Foundation's projects is constantly being developed, both from within and from third parties. Mediawiki is an open source software package, one with a significant share in its market; efforts to add functionality often have their own development projects and timelines. The presentation outlined some of these efforts and their respective timelines.

Wiki-to-print is currently in testing, and is expected to deploy February to March, 2008

Flagged revisions is currently in testing, and is expected to deploy before June, 2008

Collaborative video editing is currently in testing, and is expected to deploy initially perhaps in October 2008.

It's now been three weeks since the four-person Lakota Freedom Delegation declared that the Lakota people were withdrawing from their treaties with the United States and, though small, the movement still proves controversial: two U.S.-recognized Lakota tribal governments have rejected the Delegation's authority outright with at least one tribe stating it will consider the Delegation's, now Lakota Oyate's, proposal. The rest of the tribes have remained silent.

The central figure the movement has been Canupa Gluha Mani, a longtime activist whose tactics have led repeatedly to his arrest and imprisonment — most recently in June 2007, when Canupa Gluha Mani was one of six arrested who participated in blockading a road in Nebraska to keep outside alcohol from entering his dry reservation where it is banned. Wikinews talked to Mani about the movement and Lakota Oyate in an exclusive interview.

With regard to Russell Means, who has declared himself Chief Facilitator of the Republic of Lakotah, he said, "I've worked with my uncle Russell Means in positive venues. And I'm still behind him, I have love for him;" He emphasized the familial bond between himelf and Means, noting that Means had adopted him as a nephew. However, "the Lakota have to be recognized." It was "genocide", he said, that of all the races of humanity, American Indians are not represented at the United Nations.

DISCLAIMER: IF I CANNOT REACH THE WINNER OF THE CONTEST, I WILL IMMEDIATELY GO TO THE SECOND-PLACE WINNER. IF I CANNOT REACH HER, I WILL GO TO THE THIRD-PLACE WINNER, AND SO ON.

We got widespread participation in the Pick Your Own Top Model contest I ushered in last week. I want to thank you all for sharing your opinions.

A poll will start right now, which will end at 12 a.m. Eastern on Saturday, January 12. You can find it by looking at the right sidebar on the blog page. We have narrowed the pool down to eight top vote-getters. You all suggested 56 girls, and out of those, the top eight with the most suggestions got slots. Here they are:

Elyse Sewell (Cycle 1) - Elyse was a med student from Albuquerque, New Mexico before competing on Top Model. She endeared herself to viewers by accident, asserting herself as a straight-shooter and knowing she was intellectually above all the other girls in the house. She now works as a model in Hong Kong.

Yoanna House (Cycle 2) - A former babysitter from Jacksonville, Florida, Yoanna lost 60 pounds to compete on Top Model, and eventually won the top prize. She now hosts The Look for Less on the Style Network.

Brittany Brower (Cycle 4) - The loud party girl from Tallahassee, Florida progressed week after week to make it to the final four in Cycle 4. She now lives in Los Angeles, and what exactly is she doing now? A lot of fans want to know.Kahlen Rondot (Cycle 4) - The Oklahoma girl won over many viewers with her innocent and joyful personality. Making it to the final two, she lost to Naima Mora, which is still hotly disputed by many ANTM fans. Speculation abounds that Kahlen has left the modeling business entirely, instead focusing on bartending. Is it true? Is she signed to a modeling agency or not? An interview would be the best avenue to quell the rumors.

Mollie Sue Steenis-Gondi (Cycle 6) - The Tampa native struggled with her photoshoots as well as her perceived lack of personality. Despite making a premature exit from Cycle 6, Mollie now works in Paris, and has been seen in French Cosmopolitan. Does she think her exit from the show is a lot of bull, knowing what she knows now?Jade Cole (Cycle 6) - Do we need to say more about Jade? "Exotic biracial butterfly"? "Soldier sister"? "The undiscovered supermodel"? She could take wonderful pictures but at times her personality was totally rank, but let's face it, she made for great television. Who could forget that poetic line "Furonda, my dear/I know your skin is bumpy/But my skin is flawless/And you look really lumpy"?

Joanie Dodds (Cycle 6) - The first contestant never to reach the bottom two during her entire stint on the show, she lost to Danielle at the end of Cycle 6. Rumors have since surfaced that Joanie is no longer modeling and has returned to her hometown. Are these true? Will she model again? Does she still embrace the show that got her so many fans?

Natasha Galkina (Cycle 8) - The energetic, vibrant, positive Russian charmed many viewers with her wise words of wisdom, such as "Some people have war in their countries." Originally overcoming a language barrier with many early photo shoots, she made it to the final two in Cycle 8, losing to Jaslene. Some viewers feel Natasha should have won instead of Jaslene. My worry is, how is this interview even going to sound if we do it by e-mail? She didn't have the best grasp for English when she spoke; who knows what it's going to be like when she types it. :/

Now go to the sidebar on the right and vote for your favorite. DO NOT COMMENT HERE WITH YOUR VOTE.

Saturday, January 5, 2008

Wikinews has learned that the Lakota Freedom Delegation, also known as Lakotah Oyate, an organization of activists fighting for the Sioux Indian Nation to withdraw all treaties with the United States, was "hijacked" by its spokesman, Russell Means, an activist for Native American Indians.

On December 19, 2007, Means and the "delegation" went to Washington, D.C. and hand-delivered a letter, signed by the Delegation, to the U.S. State Department claiming that the Lakota Indian Tribe was declaring that all treaties between the tribe and the U.S. have been withdrawn or canceled. They also held a press conference declaring their freedom.

Wednesday, January 2, 2008

PLEASE READ ADDENDUM PLACED AT TOP OF THE BLOG POST (January 4, 2008):

For emphasis: SIMPLE LISTS OF CONTESTANTS ARE MORE LIKELY TO BE OVERLOOKED THAN REASONED RESPONSES. Names that may mean something to you may mean nothing to me; for example, I did not like Ann from Cycle 3 but loved Eva. Other people may like Ann and hate Eva, so a simple name doesn't give a why from you, the reader. I want to know why you want your favorite girl to be interviewed, because as viewers do not have one mind, what you may like may not be something I like. I want to hear the who and the why, so you can have the most enjoyable reading experience possible. That's what I'm going for here. Thank you.

-----

Hello, Wikinews readers! This is Mike Halterman. I've started my interviews and plans for the first batch of America's Next Top Model contestants outlined in a post from last month. The interview with Whitney Cunningham (Cycle 8) was published last month, and I plan to have interviews with Keenyah Hill (Cycle 4) and Furonda Brasfield (Cycle 6) published in the next two weeks.

As the news of the interviews traveled across fan sites, I noticed the reactions ranged from "Oh, wow, I really like those girls!" to "Oh, who cares about them? Can't he interview someone people cared about?" I acknowledge I can't win them all, so I am extending a challenge to all of you. Tell me which Top Model girl you want to see interviewed and why, and I will try to get that interview for you.

I really want to hear your picks! I picked the girls I interviewed because I found them interesting, but I want to know what you find interesting, and more importantly, why you find them interesting. Leave a comment here and tell me! When my interviews with Keenyah and Furonda are published, I will announce which girl has won the vote, and if I can get an interview with them.

Got a scoop for us? Have a news story you want us to report? Need a reporter?

About Wikinews

The Wikinews project is a free contentnews source. It is a daughter project of the Wikimedia Foundation that seeks to provide content where everyone is invited to contribute reports about events large and small, either from direct experience, or summarized from elsewhere.

Wikinews promotes the idea of participatory journalism because we believe that citizens know what is news like no others. You are invited to join in this effort, and share news that is of interest to you.

Unlike Wikinews itself, this blog often contains the opinions of Wikinews contributors. These thoughts are those of the individual writers, and not of Wikinews or the Wikimedia Foundation itself.

License

The content of this blog is available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License unless otherwise specified. In short, you are allowed to use these materials as long as you credit them to "Wikinews".Most images are available under free licenses, but some may be copyrighted and constitute fair use (for details, please consult Wikinews).Wikinews® logos are registered trademarks and copyrighted by the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

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License

The content of this blog is available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License unless otherwise specified. In short, you are allowed to use these materials as long as you credit them to "Wikinews" by adding a link to Wikinews whenever reposting an article.Most images are available under free licenses, but some may be copyrighted and constitute fair use (for details, please consult Wikinews).Wikinews® logos are registered trademarks and copyrighted by the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.